Antisocial Personality Disorder
Antisocial personality disorder is one of ten diagnosable mental disorders found in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. This particular manual lists different mental illnesses that a psychiatrist can diagnose a patient with based on a variety of symptoms that they are experiencing. Antisocial personality is a disorder frequently seen in criminals. Specifically, violent offenders. Statistically speaking, it is believed that around 47% of male inmates and 21% of female inmates suffer from this illness. With antisocial personality disorder, the individual has a blatant disregard for the welfare of other people and a lack of morality. However, note that they understand other people have feelings and there are things they are not allowed to do. But, they make a conscious decision to ignore such things. As seen in my Amittyville Horror article, Ronald DeFeo Jr. had antisocial personality disorder. During his trial, he tried to use an insanity plea as a defense. However, antisocial personality disorder itself does not warp your understanding of what is right and wrong. It just gives you the ability to ignore such things without feelings of remorse or guilt. This is an important distinction in cases where the insanity defense is being used for an individual suffering from this particular illness.
While someone cannot be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder until adulthood, symptoms usually begin showing up during childhood. As a child, someone with antisocial personality disorder will steal, lie, disregard authority, and display violent tendencies towards people and animals. As they age, these symptoms will manifest differently. While they still display violent behavior, they may develop the comfort to escalate to being violent towards people. This particular person will slowly increase the level of violence used towards others until they are comfortable enough. For example, they can start with being verbally abusive then escalate to pushing or hitting before becoming incredibly violent with others. Along with these violent tendencies, an adult with antisocial personality disorder will be impulsive, lie to people to deceive or exploit, never learn from consequences, lack empathy, treat others in a callous manner, partake in risk taking behaviors, struggle with employment due to a lack of responsibility, have criminal tendencies, display arrogant behavior and have a pattern of abusive relationships. They are also far more likely to receive a dual diagnosis of a substance use disorder than the average person. Because of their violent impulses and lack of moral compass, they tend to become criminals as adults.
While no one truly understands what causes this disease, there are a few theories that might be the key to prevention. There have been links showing that this might be a hereditary illness that can run in families. However, many people believe that this can be caused by intense childhood trauma. Therefore, many people believe that early intervention is key to preventing criminal behavior in adults. There is a strong pattern of people having a violent upbringing, abusive family or are frequently neglected. Children who are also diagnosed with a conduct disorder also have an increased risk of developing antisocial personality disorder.
People who struggle with this illness are also prone to not recognizing that they need help. Sadly, there is not much that can be done for this illness. Mental health counseling might help a little, but it is one of the toughest mental disorders to treat. There have been cases that long term treatment and intense observation were beneficial in decreasing certain behaviors. But due to their opposition to treatment, this is rare. Sadly, this is a disorder that also has no medication approved for treating it. Today, the best way to treat antisocial personality is to prevent its progression in the individual during childhood.
